Can Feminist Movements Actually Change the Law?

Feminist Movements: A demand written on a placard isn’t a law. But has it ever become one? Have the voices screaming in the streets held a gavel in legislative councils? It’s 2025; how far have the demands for “equal rights for women” come? Are women fighting for the same rights but in different epochs, different ages, and different arenas? Have protests ever become policies? The answer is yes — but not an easy one. 

FOR MOST OF HISTORY, TRUTH HAD A MASCULINE TONGUE. 

Let’s backtrack this. The history of the feminist movement dates as deep into the trench of time as Ancient Mesopotamia, where women of Babylon fought for legal inheritance rights. The streets of Rome have echoed with shrill chants known as the Lex Oppia Repeal Protest against senators limiting women’s use of wealth. The last decade has answered one woman’s call against workplace harassment and resonated beyond colour and culture in the #MeToo movement. The imperialist powers and the so-called First World nations have a multitude of hidden agendas. And the demands? The demands are for the same right to existence, agency, education, and a voice that will not be silenced. 

History textbooks in Pakistan have one chapter dedicated to “women’s rights, Haqooq-e-Niswan, and sometimes, when the editor feels generous, a section dedicated to ‘women’s contributions in the struggle for independence’.” Why not the struggles mentioned in each era? Why not contributions to each subject? Haven’t we made enough? The answer is: They weren’t recorded.

Virginia Woolf

When Virginia Woolf said, “For most of history, anonymous was a woman.” It wasn’t out of spite. In the literary canon, which often precedes mass thought, George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans, a woman, had to write under a masculine pseudonym, or else her work wouldn’t be published. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was an act of self-assertion around men like Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, who wouldn’t take her craft seriously. Most of the contributions to thought, whether in literature, politics, or science, were mentioned only when they fit a male standard. Women in Mesopotamia had ownership rights only if the king worshipped a female deity or when they dedicated themselves to a male one. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong, the man who set foot on the moon for the first time.

Hardly anyone remembers the woman, Margaret Hamilton, who made the landing possible. Why would anyone bother with policymaking for a sect that is missing from the narrative? Few authors write background stories for side characters. Their sole job is to glorify the protagonist. Just like that, women are only mentioned when they serve a patriarchal narrative because for most of recorded history, Truth had a masculine tongue. 

WHEN PROTEST BECAME POLICY. 

On February 6, 1918, the UK government granted limited suffrage to women over 30 who owned property through the Representation of the People Act. Emmeline Pankhurst was a political activist who organised the movement for women’s agency beyond the ballot box. She warned the masses against institutional marginalisation of women. “Men make the moral code … they expect women to accept it … it is not proper for women to fight for their liberties.” Her struggle focused on addressing gender pay gaps, harassment, and violence, and she emphasised the necessity of including women’s voices in policymaking. After fifty-two years of struggle, women in Britain and Ireland had gained a limited right to vote, which was still insufficient. It took another ten years of an active social and political landscape before women secured an equal franchise. This is a classic demonstration of a right not granted but won. 

The Catholic Church’s orthodoxy and negligent courts saw women as no more than “baby-birthing machines”. Teodara Vasquez, a woman in El Salvador, was jailed for ten years for stillbirth. Her crime was surviving the stillbirth instead of dying with the baby. Latin America saw the Green Wave, LA Marea Verde, and slogans like Ni Una Menos as a consequence of the inhumane treatment of women. Public protests began in 2015 against sexual violence and femicide. The waves led to the eventual lifting of the ban in Argentina in December 2020. El Salvador and Honduras’ refusal to decriminalise abortion and stillbirth reveals the misogynistic, orthodox doctrines that have been the hallmark of legal and political systems for centuries. 

South Asia Struggle

South Asia has seen its fair share of women struggle, with or without colonisation. The patriarchs changed attire, not attributes. February 12, 1983, marks the first act of resistance on the part of Pakistani women against discrimination in the Evidence Laws, in which a woman’s testimony was reduced to half the weight of a man’s. Women Action Forum (WAF) shook hands with Pakistani Women Lawyers in Punjab and shook the gates of the High Court. This radical act went down in history as the first women-led public protest. This time, they spoke up for themselves, refusing to conform to traditional norms. They were greeted with tear gas and batons, and 50 activists were arrested, but they stood adamantly, forcing the gods of legislation to mend their ways. 

The Hudood Ordinance 1981 categorised zina and rape under the same crime tag. It turned a victim into a culprit unless four adult males testified in her favour. Otherwise, she will receive whiplashes and face prison because her rape wasn’t public enough. The legislative council, however, failed to elaborate on the standard. How will four adult males witness a rape? 

Safia Bibi

The lack of nuance in law-making and religion being abused as a tool exposes the institutionalised misogynistic doctrines that permeate every nook and cranny of our society. Innocent women like the 13-year-old blind child, Safia Bibi, bear the consequences of legislative lethargy. In 1981, Safia Bibi, a domestic worker, reported that her employers, Maqsood Ahmed and his father, had sexually assaulted her. The ordinance required four male testimonies, which she lacked. And as a cruel turn of fate, she was charged with Zina as the ‘protectors of Islamic Sharia’ declared. The conviction lit a fire in Pakistan’s Women’s organisations. Both national and international pressure mounted until the Federal Sharia Court intervened. 

Asma Jahangir

The ordinance blurred the lines between protection and criminalisation. It eventually led to Safia Bibi being released from Jail, but after 6 months of imprisonment and fifteen lashes. Iron-hearted woman, social activist, and elite lawyer, Asma Jahangir supported Safia’s case, and WAF, her organisation, was a direct product to counter systematic tyranny against women. Rape and Zina are not synonymous. The ordinance created an atmosphere of terror in Pakistani society, especially in the less developed and rural areas, where dignity was all women had. How many offenders were let go because the woman didn’t have substantial ‘evidence’ of a crime, mostly happening in isolation? Especially when she knew if she couldn’t do the herculean task of conjuring up evidence, then she would face national ostracisation?

Later in 2006, President Musharraf took a better stance and relocated rape in the Pakistan Penal Code under the Women’s Protection Act and eased evidence standards. 

HOLD THE GAVEL BUT DARE NOT DECLARE 

But we have come far beyond all that, haven’t we? Today, girls are sent to school, to jobs, and to sit in the parliament. Our pride in women’s agency and freedom is far from authentic. Today, girls aren’t educated for the sake of education and ambition but because it has become a societal norm. An additional piece of paper is added to her dowry. The daughter-in-law is a doctor…but we won’t let her practise. Educated women with jobs are paid less than the men working in the same positions in the same companies in 2025. Corporations add a woman to their posters to appear “open-minded” and “versatile,” but the number of women in leadership roles is next to none.

Don’t tell me about the one who made it. Tell me how many. How many voices were silenced in workplace harassment before the #MeToo movement? How many women writers went unread before George Eliot got recognition? Check How many female scientists were robbed of their findings and denied university degrees before Marie Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize? If the legislative councils have female ‘representation’, why did we have to fight so hard for Zainab’s rapist to get convicted? If there are policies that forbid honour killings, then why was the Baloch earth reddened with Bano Bibi’s and Ahsan Ullah’s blood?

Lawmaking isn’t the same as law implementation. We need to continuously tailor our policies for the better survival and safety of women than what we have today. Feminist movements have a long history because someone somewhere seeded into men’s minds that women’s lives matter less than theirs. And until this seed is completely uprooted, Feminism will continue to thrive and fight for better breathing space.